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Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

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Re: Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

#321

Post by Suppafly »

bentt wrote: post #157

One time my wife and I had a random conversation, utterly random, about cat hamster wheels. Like, why doesn't that exist? I got an ad for it the next day (it exists). I don't believe that my phone is not listening to me and I challenge you to choose a random word out of the dictionary and say it 100 times in front of your phone.

>One time my wife and I had a random conversation, utterly random, about cat hamster wheels. Like, why doesn't that exist? I got an ad for it the next day (it exists).

Your wife probably googled them as soon as you were done talking about them and then you using the same network got an ad for them.

Re: Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

#322

Post by Suppafly »

tsoukase wrote: post #170
bentt wrote: post #157

One time my wife and I had a random conversation, utterly random, about cat hamster wheels. Like, why doesn't that exist? I got an ad for it the next day (it exists). I don't believe that my phone is not listening to me and I challenge you to choose a random word out of the dictionary and say it 100 times in front of your phone.

A few times per year I similarly have a conversation with my wife at night (lastly about a hair type) and the next morning a corresponding ad was presented at her at Facebook (shampoo). Only her Android phone was at the room (open, logged in Facebook in Chrome, no app). I definitely believe they hear us but they trigger the action with care and selectively, so as not to get caught (eg to low tech people, when the ad…

>I am astonished that nobody had ever done a reverse engineering research yet.

They have, what you think is happening has been disproven tons of times. You just don't want to believe it.

Re: Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

#323

Post by Suppafly »

simonw wrote: post #30
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I discovered when going down this rabbit hole is that if you had that conversation in your house and your visitors have access to your wifi, it may be that they performed the search without you knowing, and your ISP connected that data to you and sold it (as they do).

How would your ISP connect that data if every search engine uses HTTPS now, so there's no way for the ISP to see what you were searching for?

It's not the ISP that's connecting you together, it's google. If two people are on the same network and one of them is searching for something, it's going to affect the other person's ads too.

Re: Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

#324

Post by Suppafly »

simonw wrote: post #56
number6 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A swan can't stop a hurricane

OK wow that actually fits here. https://simonwillison.net/2025/Apr/23/meaning-slop/

man google's ai uses context clues better than some people I know. I kinda wish it wouldn't though, because it gives somewhat real sounding answers to things like that that actually have a different meaning because of historical and cultural context that it's not aware of. it should let you know when it's making something up using it's limited awareness of word meanings vs something that's an actual phrase that people use.

Re: Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

#325

Post by LeafItAlone »

kurthr wrote: post #186
LeafItAlone wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's what "siri", "hey google", "alexa" etc are all doing 24 hours a day. You might have just convinced me that the “phone is listening” is total bunk, because these dedicated devices are just so bad at recognizing the very specific, short, phrases when explicitly directed at them that I can’t imagine they are listening for much more. Listening to my in-laws try to activate their Alexa and Google Homes is somethin…

You expect 95% accuracy matching activation phrases. You don't need that for ads. It only needs to work some of the time for some of the people, especially if it makes $/click.

>You expect 95% accuracy matching activation phrases.

At this point I don’t even expect 50% (trying twice), and I’m still disappointed.

>It only needs to work some of the time for some of the people, especially if it makes $/click.

So where can one find this market? We know the price of traditional ad clicks. Surely we’d see a market for “voice-driven” ads with higher rates?

Re: Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

#326

Post by DrillShopper »

saagarjha wrote: post #222
DrillShopper wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private and charter aviation exists and is free from those constraints.

Some of us are not billionaires.

You don't have to be to fly charter or private.

Re: Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

#327

Post by Spooky23 »

jsbisviewtiful wrote: post #318
Spooky23 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is so much time spent “debunking” audio recordings being shared with various entities it makes me more suspicious. Just like Facebook’s “we never sell your data (we just stalk you and sell ads using your data)”. I’m sure there’s a similar weasel excuse… “we never listen to your audio (but we do analyze it to improve quality assurance)”

Not saying this is true, but the amount of time and effort put into saying "no one is listening to you" could be attributed to the novel 1984, where the government is actively listening to its citizens. Enough people could associate the novel with government surveillance that it's what people interpret as the most likely surveillance happening - and enough people don't understand tech that it's lost on them that a) t…

Sure it does. You just haven’t seen it.

Download OtterAI. Or run voice memos all day, load it into NotebookLM and it about your day. Hell, setup whisper on your MacBook and you can chug away at pretty significant quantities of audio.

I’ve seen solutions that process audio from hundreds of multi-party meetings and can do all sorts of analysis. In one case, it can do realtime sentiment analysis and alert security when an encounter is getting tense.

Re: Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

#328

Post by mulderc »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #289
mulderc wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the type of travel right? I took Amtrak weekly for several years and never even had to show ID.

Did this change? Last time I tried to take them (ten+ years ago, because my license expired) they refused my ticket purchase because my id was expired.

I don’t remember ever having to show ID with Amtrak.

Re: Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

#329

Post by EasyMark »

wrs wrote: post #154
EasyMark wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, I liked the simplicity of having things on my tv, but I gave up and got an apple tv box. I was getting way too many "I was just talking about that!" ads on some of the "free" services i was watching old tv shows and movies on. I'm a pretty frugal guy for the most part but buying a separate box that doesn't sell everything you do and say to advertisers is worth it.

According to the paper, your TV may send snapshots even when it’s in a “dumb” HDMI input mode. So make sure it’s not on the network at all.

yeah, to be on my home network you need a password. there are no "guest" networks. good point though

Re: Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

#330

Post by pests »

jeffhuys wrote: post #317
sroussey wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, it interfaces directly with the display driver and overwrites anything from user land or the OS.

That's actually amazing, didn't know that. Do you have an article with some more info on it? Love to read about this stuff.

Here’s an article with further links:

https://9to5mac.com/2024/09/11/iphone-16-privacy-feature-m4-...

I couldn’t find a more technical article but this was when it was released.

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